The present invention relates to programs for assisting in the decision making process and in particular to program that organizes idea in either a text outline or a tree-diagram of issues, positions, and arguments and that allows quantitative weighting of each to provide quantitative explanation.
Text documents are a convenient way to share ideas. Text is easily generated and edited using a word processor or the like, and easily communicated or stored in either electronic or paper form.
Unfortunately, the relationship between ideas, as expressed in text alone, is not always clear. To remedy this problem, it is common to impose an outline structure on text documents in which xe2x80x9csubservientxe2x80x9d ideas are placed in paragraphs indented and underneath paragraphs representing xe2x80x9cdominantxe2x80x9d ideas. Each paragraph may be numbered in a way that further illustrates this relationship. By using multiple levels of indenting, outlining allows an arbitrarily complex set of dominant and subservient text elements to be represented. The outlining process is supported by many word processors which allow the user to switch between an outline mode and a standard text mode and which automate the process of numbering outlined paragraphs.
Outlining is nevertheless limited in its ability to convey complex relationships between ideas. When many ideas are presented, related dominant ideas are often separated by many subservient ideas with the result that the relationship between the dominant ideas is obscured. Further, the indentation of paragraphs (or numbering) provides little additional information about the relationship between ideas beyond the relatively general relationships of dominance and subservience. Finally, the outlining process in itself provides little guidance to the user in organizing text or in generating ideas.
The parent application to this application describes a text-processing tool that operates in either a text outline mode or a tree structure mode to organize ideas, and which allows numeric priorities to be attached to the ideas of a common level in either the outline or tree, and redraws the outline or tree to comport with those priorities.
While the numeric priorities help in organizing the ideas, in complex charts or trees, it may be difficult to decide among competing ideas, even when the ideas are organized spatially and labeled as to priorities.
The present invention provides a systematic way of combining assigned numeric priorities of ideas according to their hierarchy to provide a succinct quantitative decision or a selection among quantitatively tagged alternatives. By so combining the priorities of structured ideas to reach a single decision, the user is prompted to focus on the organization and ranking of the ideas that produced the decision and to evaluate their completeness and accuracy.
Specifically then, the invention provides a program for the organization of ideas using an electronic computer, the electronic computer having a user input device and a graphic display. When implemented in a personal computer the input devices may take the form of a mouse, keyboard, voice, etc and the output device may take the form of a graphic display. When implemented as an embedded computer, the input devices may take the form of any sensor device and the output device can be a display or any control signal. The program includes instructions executed on the electronic computer to accept text identified ideas from the user via the user input device and to accept at least one hierarchy instruction from the user via the user input device to relate the accepted ideas in dependencies. In an embedded solution, the input structure could be hard coded in the firmware and the sensors could be used to set the value of the arguments. Representations of the ideas are displayed organized into levels defined by the common dependencies and the user assigns numeric priorities to the ideas. The invention calculates priorities of at least one xe2x80x9cupperxe2x80x9d idea being the numeric priority of the upper idea modified by the priority of at least one xe2x80x9clowerxe2x80x9d idea subservient on the upper idea.
Thus it is one object of the invention to provide quantitative guidance to the user of the program that imports into top level ideas the values of the lower ideas on which the top level ideas rest, where the importing reflects both the priorities and the levels of the hierarchy and the hierarchical structure.
The upper idea may be a single proposition and the calculated priority may indicate whether the proposition is supported or not by the ideas subservient on that statement.
Thus, it is one object of the invention to provide numeric guidance for problems cast in the form of a single statement whose validity is being investigated
Alternatively, the upper idea may be a set of propositions of equal rank in the hierarchy and the calculated priorities may indicate which proposition of the set is best supported by the lower ideas subservient on that statement.
Thus, another object of the invention is to allow numeric guidance for problems cast in the form of alternatives.
The user may provide an indication as to whether an idea is a supporting or opposing idea by identifying its polarity.
Thus, it is another object of the invention to allow a system for quantitative guidance where both xe2x80x9cproxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cconxe2x80x9d justifications may be advanced.
The program may indicate quantitatively the amount of support an upper idea has only if the lower ideas subservient to the upper idea are indicated to be supporting or opposing ideas. Otherwise, the program may indicate quantitatively which of a set of upper ideas of equal rank is best supported.
Thus, it is one object of the invention to automatically select a particular problem formulation (the validity of a single proposition, vs. the most valid selection among propositions) depending on whether the user identifies opposing or supporting statements in the previous level of the hierarchy.
The calculated priorities (weights) of upper ideas may be determined by multiplying the weights of at least one upper idea by factors based on the priorities of lower ideas subservient to the upper idea. Numeric priorities may be percentages and the calculated priority may multiply the priority of at least one upper idea by the percentage numeric priority of the supporting lower ideas subservient to the upper idea and by one minus the percentage of the numeric priority of the opposing lower ideas.
Thus, it is an object of the invention to provide a simple mathematical basis for computing priorities.
The priorities of supporting and opposing lower ideas may be previously modified by the priorities of ideas subservient to the supporting and opposing lower ideas.
It is a further object of the invention to allow quantitative information to be extracted from complex multi-level hierarchical structures that are useful for some kinds of decision-making.
The calculated priorities for an upper idea may be based on the numeric priorities of the upper idea modified by the priority of at least one lower idea subservient to the upper idea, only when the lower idea subservient to the upper idea also has a subservient idea.
Thus, it is another object of the invention to provide two mechanisms for determining calculated priorities of upper ideas, one that provides less weight for unsupported ideas in the hierarchy.
The program may modify priorities entered by the user when two priorities having a common dependency are the same, by adding a small, predetermined increment to one of the priorities. This modification may be used only for situations that require a definite sorting order.
Thus, it is another object of the invention to provide for a sorting order that eliminates ties in the event of identical priorities being assigned.